Black lady with five kids: You can’t get anything here. We gots to get to Old Navy to buy us all our Fourth of July t-shirts so we match at the picnic.Black guy: They have the best deal. Shirts are five dollars each, that’s like [counts kids, self, and wife] less than twenty bucks for all of us, and even the baby shit has a flag on it.
–Target, Atlantic Terminal, Brooklyn
Overheard by: lora

Annoyed friend: Yeah, I like what you did with your hair. Seriously, it’s a nice look for you.Vain guy: Thanks. You know, I’m always amazed at how a good haircut can drive away the usual enthusiasm for suicide.Annoyed friend: Hold on. It doesn’t look that good.
–Union Square
Overheard by: Jeremiah

A teen girl punches her father repeatedly in the arm.
Older sister: You know he can’t feel that, right? He’s wearing a leather jacket. Teen girl: What?Older sister: Yeah, that’s why motorcyclists wear leather, so they don’t get their skin scraped off when they go sliding across the pavement. Teen girl: Oh! So if I punch a cow, it can’t feel it?
–The Plaza

Latina girl with empty seat next to her: This whole ride nobody’s sat down in this seat. This bus is gonna be packed before a white person sits in this seat.
Three stops later, a white girl sits down in the seat.
Latina girl, approvingly: Gangsta.
–M15 bus
Overheard by: Emily Duncanson

Little girl: Where does the H train go, mommy?Mom: There is no H train.Little girl: I train?Mom: No I train either.Little girl: J train? Where does the J train go?Mom: To Brooklyn. [Pause] Nowhere we’d ever go.
–F train, between West 4th & 14th